The Guest Summary

A young Frenchman named Daru sees two men climbing toward the schoolhouse where he teaches and resides in the desert mountains of French Algeria. One man, the old Corsican gendarme Balducci, rides on horseback and holds a rope tethered to his prisoner, an unnamed Arab, who proceeds on foot. Balducci informs Daru that he is to receive the prisoner (who has killed a cousin of his in a fight over some grain) and deliver him to police headquarters at Tinguit, some fifteen kilometers away. At first Daru refuses Balducci’s order, then relents and takes the prisoner in; having been offended by Daru’s reluctance, Balducci leaves in a sullen mood.

As the story progresses, it becomes clear to the reader that Daru would welcome the escape of the prisoner: It would relieve Daru of the demands thrust on him against his will. It is a time of uprising, the Arabs against the French government. The Arab prisoner asks Daru to join him and the other rebels, but it is unlike Daru to make an active commitment to anything. In the inscrutable world in which he lives it would make no difference anyhow, for actions are misconstrued over and over again. Still, one must do what one must do, in spite of the absurd interpretations society might make: This is a central message that runs throughout Albert Camus’s work. Daru, after a restless night, walks with his prisoner to a point between two directions, one of which leads to the French administration and the police, the other of which leads to the nomads. Having given the Arab dates, bread, sugar, and a thousand francs, he leaves the choice of directions to him. The Arab remains motionless in indecision as Daru turns his back on him and walks away; when, after a time, Daru turns around, he sees that the Arab is walking on the road to prison.

A little later, as Daru stands before the window of the classroom, he watches, but hardly sees, the panorama of the plateau; behind him, written on the blackboard, are the words: “You handed over our brother. You will pay for this.” Daru feels alone.

To translate the French word hôte—someone who either gives or receives hospitality—into English, it is necessary to sacrifice its ambiguity. “The Guest,” Camus’s most frequently anthologized short story, focuses on a character who, suspended between giving and receiving, fails at hospitality. It could as accurately, or ironically, be translated as “The Host.”

At the outset of “The Guest,” Daru, a schoolmaster of European stock who was born in Algeria, observes two figures, one on horseback and one on foot, slowly make their way through the desolate, snowy landscape toward the schoolhouse where he lives, alone. Balducci, the man on horseback, is a gendarme, and he is accompanying an Arab who has been arrested for killing his own cousin.

Balducci explains that because of civil unrest Daru is being conscripted to convey the prisoner to the authorities in Tinguit, a town located a few hours’ journey away, the next day. The teacher refuses this assignment, but Balducci leaves the unnamed Arab with him anyway. A reluctant host to an unwanted guest, Daru passes the night fitfully, fearful that the Arab might attack him and wishing for his escape. In the morning, the two set out for police headquarters in Tinguit. After walking a considerable distance but still two hours short of their destination, Daru parts company with the Arab, telling him to proceed alone, either to turn himself in to the police in Tinguit or to seek refuge among sympathetic nomads. The teacher watches somberly as the Arab continues alone along the path to prison. On returning to his schoolhouse, Daru, who has tried not to take sides, discovers a message threatening revenge against him for having delivered the Arab to the authorities.

In “The Guest,” the third of six short stories in a collection titled Exile and the Kingdom, Camus continues his examination of longing and alienation. The final word of the story, “alone,” emphasizes the work’s central theme of solitude. Just like the French Algerian Camus, who was rebuffed by both sides when he attempted in 1955 to mediate between France and the Algerian separatists, Daru finds himself condemned to solitude, uncomfortable either among his fellow colons or within the indigenous Arab community. A drawing of the four rivers of France on the schoolroom blackboard indicates that his job is to inculcate his North African pupils with the culture of a European colonial power. However, Daru’s loyalties are not so much torn as eroded. The only bond that he feels is, ironically, with the vast, forbidding landscape that remains indifferent to the human beings who put in brief appearances. Like much of the rest of Camus’s fiction, “The Guest” employs spare, incisive language to depict a universe of disconnected human beings who are tormented by the illusion of free choice.